


I Would Not Be An Angel

by williamshooketh



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jane Eyre Fusion, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Every Period Romance Trope In The Book, Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, Past Child Abuse, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-World War I, Slow Burn, Smoking, like seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-09-22 06:43:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17055107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/williamshooketh/pseuds/williamshooketh
Summary: Desperate to escape Mary Lou Barebone, Credence takes a secretarial job for Percival Graves. The last thing he expects is to fall in love with his employer.Jane Eyre AU. Tags updated as the story progresses.





	1. Quid pro quo

**Author's Note:**

> TATPRILB (to all the period romances I’ve loved before)

 

 

> “I am not an angel,’ I asserted; ‘and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.’” — Charlotte Brontë, _Jane Eyre_

* * *

 

It was always misty in the mornings on Long Island: the vapor clung to the branches of the trees and hung low on the grounds like bedsheets laid across a clothesline. The sight made Credence think of laundry days at Miss Barebone’s, which made his stomach twist uneasily. He didn’t miss the school at all—there hadn’t been anything to miss there for a long time—but the reminder of it was tempered by the peace of mornings at the estate. At Miss Barebone’s, mornings were either bitterly cold or sweltering, depending on the season, and always colored by anxiety: rushed splashes of water from a basin shared with the other boys, shuffling to morning services before choking down breakfast, which was always the same watery oatmeal and muddy coffee. By contrast, lingering over breakfast with Newt and Mrs. Esposito seemed like the most illicit luxury. There was a curious lightness in his chest at all times now that had unsettled him at first until the end of his first week when he realized that the sensation was freedom.

To Credence, who had spent most of his twenty-two years in a tenement-turned-school, and whose own room had been little bigger than a closet, it seemed that he had moved into a palace out of the fairy tales he hadn’t been permitted to read. His bedroom was easily the size of their dining room back home, with large windows that let in the light and overlooked the grounds. He had his own office, with a desk of his own and bookshelves, which was adjoined to his new employer’s office. Although Mr. Graves was away in town, Credence didn’t dare intrude and treated the room as a whole as off-limits. A spiral staircase connected them to the library. There was a piano downstairs in the main parlor, a garage for the multiple cars, a patio in the back garden for entertaining guests.

“You should have seen the place in its heyday,” Newt told him over breakfast that first morning. They were eating in the kitchen, with the back door open to let in the morning breeze., and he had been kind enough to say nothing and wait when Credence crossed himself before he began eating. “I was barely your age of course, then, but it was like nothing I’d ever seen. So much color. All the flower beds teeming. There used to be rhododendrons by the main doors to match the red in the stained glass, but those died a few years ago. The Old Girl’s fallen somewhat into disgrace, I’m afraid,” he added regretfully. The Old Girl was how Newt referred to the gardens, which were at once his pride and the bane of his existence. As the groundskeeper, he spent six days a week at the house but lived independently off the property: arriving early enough in the morning for breakfast and staying late enough to eat dinner before returning home. There was always dirt under his nails and grass stains on the knees of his trousers. As much as Newt good-naturedly cursed them, Credence thought the gardens were beautiful just as they were now: sprawling and overgrown, barely contained. The whole house was like that.

“Do you know when Mr. Graves is due back?” Credence asked. He sipped his coffee slowly, trying to make it last; it was far better than the watery stuff back at Miss Barebone’s, but he didn’t want to pour another cup and appear gluttonous. 

“Not until a few weeks from now, I expect,” said Newt. “He doesn’t stay here very often. A week here and there, and then he’ll be off again before you know it."

“What’s he like?” asked Credence. He had never seen so much as a picture of him, and had only heard of Percival Graves by vague reputation: the owner of a shipping company, wealthy, certain intimations of lost glory.

“A good employer,” Newt said. “Exacting but not idiosyncratic. He was in the war, of course,” he added. “Got a D.C.M. for it too.” 

“It’s only that I have no idea what I’m meant to do until he arrives,” said Credence. 

“If he left no instructions, then he probably expects you to rest and amuse yourself until he gets here. More coffee?” Newt held out the pot, and Credence panicked and shook his head. Newt poured more into his own cup.“I shouldn’t worry. He’s a good man. Had the decency to take me in, and there’s not many who would do that.”

Credence’s initial tour of the house had been given by Mrs. Esposito the housekeeper. Mrs. Esposito was a walking paradox; straight-laced but given to mothering anyone near her, she insisted on addressing everyone by their surnames regardless of how long she had known them, and swore blind that her job was to manage the household, not learn gossip about her employers. Despite this, she was a reliable source for all information on the Graves family stretching back roughly fifty years.

“Why are so many of the rooms shut?” Credence had asked.

“A good portion of the furniture was sold off after the late Mr. Graves passed,” she explained.

“Why was that?”

“I’d never be one to speak ill of the dead,” she said, lowering her voice, “but the late Mr. Graves made several financial decisions toward the end of his life which some later termed unwise. There were debts.” She said the word delicately, with the faintest hint of disdain. “But I’m not one to gossip.” 

* * *

With no obligations until Mr. Graves arrived, Credence had grown into the habit of walking after breakfast. At first it had been a task designed so that he would memorize the grounds and surrounding areas, but the layout was a quick study and soon he found himself walking merely for the pleasure of it. Gradually, his routes grew increasingly complicated and ambitious, until he could be away for hours at a time and not realize how long it had been until he saw the sky purpling overhead.

He had fallen asleep beneath the yew tree in one of the fields about a mile and a half off the property and only woke when a raindrop splattered against his cheek. More drops fell with increasing speed as he sat up and wiped his face. It had been a bright and sunny morning, and so he hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella. There was no pointing in hurrying, he decided; with the speed of the ensuing storm, he’d come back drenched regardless. 

To Miss Barebone’s frustration, Credence’s hair grew very quickly when it was permitted to do so. In the three weeks he had been at the house, he had lost the severity of the haircuts that she had forced on him every two weeks. It now came just past his ears. Rain dripped from his forelock. He raked his fingers through it as the downpour quickened and set off down the road back the way he’d come.

He wasn’t aware of the motor car until it was almost upon him. Too late, he spotted the headlights swinging behind him and leapt out of the way just as the car swung past him and came to screeching halt in the fields beside the road several yards away. Credence crept toward it uncertainly.

“Do you need any help?” he called, just as the passenger door opened, emitting not a person but a very large dog covered in shaggy black fur. The dog bounded past Credence, making for fields on the other side of the road. 

“Raffles!” A man followed the dog from the car, cursing as he slipped briefly on the mud in the road. Credence shook himself and lunged for the dog, who was now rolling happily in the wet grass. He grabbed her collar.

“Damn the dog.” The man had reached them. He made an impatient gesture. “Give him here.”

Credence hastened to obey. It was difficult work; the dog was excited and kept jumping from person to person. Finally, the man got a decent hold on the collar and tugged the dog toward the car again. “One of these days,” he told him, “you’re going to be the death of me.” The dog panted and strained to get at Credence, who followed helplessly. “The devil were you thinking?” It took him a moment to realize that the man was addressing not the dog, but him. “Can’t you hear?” He had to yell it over the roar of the rain.

“Hear what?”

“Hear what, _hear the car.”_ The man was wrestling the dog into the car again and having little luck at it. 

“I couldn’t hear anything over the rain!” Credence protested. The dog barked and made another bid for freedom. “Please let me help you with that.”

As quickly as it had come, the rain began to ease off.

“I’d say you’ve done enough.” He finally succeeded in getting the dog into the car and turned to face Credence, who got his first good look at him. He was older, with thick brows and dark hair that must have been neatly brushed back once, but now hung in dripping disarray in his eyes. Credence was keenly aware of his stomach swooping. The man stared at him for a moment. Then he ran his hair through his wet hair. “Where’d you say you lived?”

“At the Graves Estate.”

“You’re the secretary, aren’t you.” The man surveyed him with a calculating look, one thick eyebrow furrowed. 

Credence frowned. “Yes? Yes, I am.”

“Percival Graves,” he said and held out a gloved hand.

Credence stared at it in growing horror.

“Sir,” he said, “I am so sorry—”

Graves waved him off. “You’d better get in,” he said. Too late, Credence realized that he had been expected to shake his hand. He’d missed his cue. Graves stared at him expectantly. “Unless you’d prefer to catch your death and walk? You’re wet through already.”

Credence shook himself. “Thank you, sir.” 

He slid into the backseat of the car, keenly aware of the water he was dripping onto everything. The inside smelled strongly of cigarettes, expensive cologne, and wet dog. Beside him in the backseat was Raffles, who immediately attempted to climb into his lap despite her size. 

“Are we giving him a lift?” asked the man in the driver’s seat as Graves retook his own place.

“Jacob, meet my new secretary Mr. Barebone,” he said.

The man in the driver’s seat twisted around to face him.

“Jacob Kowalski,” he said and offered him his hand, which Credence made sure to shake this time, reaching awkwardly over the dog to do so. “I’m the chauffeur.”

“Credence Barebone.”

“Pleasure.” He faced forward again. “Let’s see if we can’t get ourselves out of here.” He put the car in reverse and gunned the engine. There was an unsettling rumbling noise, and then the car guttered to life and inched backward onto the road again.

“Again,” Credence said, “I’m so sorry about—”

“Not to worry,” said Kowalski. “If I’d have seen you, I’d have used the horn. What with the mist and the rain, it’s lucky Mr. Graves spotted you at all.” Credence glanced nervously at the back of Graves’s head, but his employer said nothing. The dog began enthusiastically licking Credence’s face; he craned his face away and gently pushed her aside. Kowalski glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Just tell her ‘no’ if she gets pushy. Dog doesn’t know she’s half the size of the car.”

“Raffles,” Graves said ominously without turning around. “Lay down.” Credence could have sworn the dog gave him a much-aggrieved look, but she obediently flopped onto her belly and put her nose between her paws. “We’ll have to give her a bath,” he continued, more to himself than Kowalski or Credence. “Sorry about the upholstery, Jacob.”

“Not a problem, sir,” said Kowalski.

They spent the rest of the drive in silence.

 

Graves’s return home was accomplished with little fanfare, and he bypassed much of the welcoming by making directly for the library and motioning Credence to follow him. “Join me for a moment, please.”

_He’s going to fire me,_ thought Credence as he followed. _He’s going to fire me, and I won’t even have technically started the job, and I’ll have to go back to Miss Barebone’s, and that’s if she’ll even take me back, and he won’t even give me a reference…_

Graves led him through the library and up the staircase into the office that Credence had been eyeing in apprehension for the last week. 

The inside looked much like Credence’s own: wood panelling, windows with a good view of the grounds, a thick carpet underfoot, a large desk dominating the space. Graves sat down behind it. 

“You’re the one from the school?” he said.

“That’s correct, sir.” It was hard to talk, let alone look him in the eye. Graves eyed him for a moment, then opened one drawer of his desk and took out a leather folder, the contents of which Credence couldn’t make out. Then Graves pushed a piece of paper toward him. 

“Do you know that is?”

Credence looked closer. “It’s a map of the house, sir.”

“That’s right,” said Graves. “I need you to sell it.”

“… the map?”

“The house.” Credence bit his tongue. Anxiety was making him stupid. “Preferably within the year, if you please. I’m not here enough to do it, so I need an assistant. That’s where you come in. Keep track of offers, necessary repairs, etcetera, etcetera. What do you think its best selling point is?” he asked suddenly.

Credence blinked. “It’s beautiful,” he said without thinking. Graves raised an eyebrow. “No, really,” he said, warming to his theme. “It’s a little rough around the edges because it hasn’t been properly lived-in or cared for, but it has so much potential—honestly, I can’t imagine why you’d want to sell it.”

“Because it’s a damned eyesore,” said Graves. He went to the window and twitched back the curtain. “Half the time it’s covered in mist, and when it’s not you see how cut off it is from everything else.” With his back turned, he couldn’t see Credence wilting. “Still,” he continued. “I won’t deny it’s got a certain something. More wild rose than English tea, but something all right.” He turned back. “I’m glad you like it,” he said. “You’ve been shown your office?”

Credence blinked. The question had come immediately, and he hadn’t been prepared for it. “I—yes. Yes. Mr. Scamander showed me.”

“Very good. And you have everything you need?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good.” He bundled up the folder again and handed it to Credence. “These are all the deeds, the floor plans, and so on.”

“Sir—” Credence broke off as Graves turned the full sharpness of his gaze on him. The words _I’ve never done anything like this before_ lined themselves up on his tongue but wilted in his employer’s gaze. “I wanted to apologize for what happened out on the road,” he said at last.

Graves studied him for a moment. Then he grunted. “Already forgotten,” he said. “That turn’s a devil, especially in the mist.” He held out his hand. “Shall we be friends, Mr. Barebone?”

He took his hand and shook it. His palm was warmer and rougher than Credence had expected.

“A pleasure to work with you, sir,” he managed.

“All mine,” said Graves. “Now, go and change out of those wet things before you catch your death.”

Credence turned to go, but Graves called his name. He looked back.

“Sir?”

“Don’t go mentioning this to the others just yet,” he said. “I’m breaking the news after dinner tonight.”

“Understood, sir.”

He let himself out.

 

Credence took the folder to his office and locked the door behind himself. If someone had thought to tell him that his employer would look like _that_ , he might have thought twice about taking the job.

 

He could count on one hand the number of times he looked at Graves over dinner that evening. Mrs. Esposito had been planning the meal for nearly two weeks in preparation for Graves’s return, but for all the effort that had been put into it, Credence could barely eat. 

_I’m going to lose my job,_ he thought. _He’s going to realize he made a mistake and that I can’t do the work, and then he’s going to fire me, and I’ll have to go back to Miss Barebone, and I really think she might kill me if she sees me again—_

Across the table, Graves seemed lost in his own thoughts as well. He too only picked at his food. There was no conversation. 

Finally, Graves wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood. His chair scraped across the floor. 

“I have to go and be the bearer of ill tidings,” he said. “If you go to my office, there should be a bottle of aspirin in the desk. If you’d fetch it and meet me in the library, I’d be grateful.” 

“Yes, sir. Sir—?” Graves paused at the door of the dining room and looked back at him. “Would you like me to be there with the others?”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” he said. “Just meet me in the library.”

 

He had an odd thrill as he opened the door to Graves’s office. His employer had only been home less than a day, but Credence still viewed the room as strictly off-limits. He peered around the edge of the door inside. 

Nearly everything in Graves’s office was covered in a thin layer of dust, with the exception of the desk and one shelf of the bookcase behind it. 

Searching someone’s desk, even with permission, felt intensely personal. Belatedly, he realized that Graves had not told him _where_ in the desk the aspirin was. He was careful to replace objects properly after he had searched beneath them; everything was painstakingly neat despite the dust, and Credence wanted to minimize the perception that he had tampered with a space that was uniquely his employer’s.

He began to go through the drawers. The two on the right contained mostly spare pens and ledgers. The top drawer on the left contained an address book and a bundle of letters bound with string which Credence didn’t dare inspect closer. He opened the bottom drawer. Unlike the other three, which had been full nearly to the brim, this one contained only one small photograph, soft at the edges, of a soldier. He was too young to be Graves, even back during the war. Credence turned it over. There was no inscription on the back except for a brief, curt notation of the year: 1917.

Credence turned it back over. He thought the man might bear a passing resemblance to Newt, albeit more polished and unapproachable, and part of him was tempted to ask him about it, but the photograph’s lonely place in the drawer suggested secrets that he was sure he shouldn’t pry into. He replaced the photograph in the drawer and was about to close it when he noticed the gleam of glass at the back. Sure enough, there was the aspirin bottle. It was only a quarter full. 

 

When he returned to the library, he found that Graves was already there. He had sunk into one of the armchairs. A fire had been lit in the grate, the first time Credence had seen it used. Heat radiated from it, making his skin feel as though it glowed. Graves took the aspirin from him without comment, swallowed several pills dry, and opened the book on his lap with a cough and bleary blink, as though he had just woken from a nap. Credence shifted his weight. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

Graves glanced up at him and blinked again, as though he had forgotten that Credence was there. “Sit down,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Credence took a seat in the opposite armchair. He didn’t think he’d ever felt less comfortable in his life. Graves returned his attention to the book in his lap. Drumming his fingers idly on the armrests and feeling as though he were under interrogation, Credence found himself straining his eyes to see what titles were on the bookshelves, but he couldn’t make any of them out. 

“You’ve been comfortable here, then?”

Credence jumped, startled by the question. Graves had looked up from his book at least. 

“Yes, thank you, sir.”

“And you’ve no questions for me?”

Several sprang to mind, including _how do I sell a house_ but Credence shook his head. “Not at the moment, sir.””

“Very good.”

They sat in silence for a minute or two. Finally Graves stirred again. “If you’ve something else you’d rather do, don’t let me keep you.”

Credence shifted uneasily. “I was planning to have an early night, sir…”

“Go on, then,” said Graves. “I won’t keep you.”

Credence tried not to leave the library too quickly.

 

Instead of going to his bedroom, however, he went downstairs, through the baize door into the kitchen. At the center table sat Mrs. Esposito, Mr. Kowalksi, and Newt. By the still-warm oven, Raffles lay curled up on the floor. 

“Credence, come join us,” said Newt. He pulled out a chair. Mr. Kowalski poured out a coffee and placed a few ladyfingers on a plate for him. At the sound of the plate on the table, Raffles rose from her spot by the oven and trotted over to Credence, looking up at him with imploring eyes. 

Newt snapped his fingers at her. “Stay. She’s named after the gentleman thief,” he added apologetically to Credence. “And rightly so.”

“Did you know?” Mrs. Esposito asked without preamble. “That he was going to sell the house?” To Credence’s relief, she didn’t seem particularly upset. None of them did. If anything, they struck him as resigned.

“He told me a few hours before he told you,” he answered. 

She nodded. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said. “There’s a lot of history here, which I suppose I can’t blame him for wanting to distance himself from.”

“What happened?” asked Credence. Raffles placed her head on his knee. He scratched her head.

“Not for me to say,” she said, and for once she didn’t elaborate. “Still, it wasn’t always this way. He loved this house when he was a boy. And it’s been in the family for generations. That he’d want to give it all up is a shock.” She shook herself. “Eat those up, won’t you?” She gestured at the ladyfingers. “We can’t repeat desserts, and I don’t want them to go to waste.”

Credence tried one. “These are good,” he told her. “Thank you.”

“Thank Mr. Kowalski, not me,” she said. 

“My _babcia_ was the best baker in New York,” Kowalksi said. “I was just lucky enough to inherit the recipes.”

“How did you find Mr. Graves, Credence?” asked Newt. 

“Intimidating.”

He smiled. “That’ll wear off soon enough. If he’s rude, it’s because he’s stressed.”

“To be fair,” Kowalski put in, “he’s usually stressed. But he’s not a bad man. You’ll get used to him within a day or so, and then you’ll be thick as thieves, mark my words.”

 

Credence woke twice that night. The second time the room felt stifling; his nightshirt was stuck damply to his back. He left the bed, opened the window a little bit to let in the night breeze, and returned to bed.

* * *

Morning dawned unseasonably cool, and when Credence descended the stairs, he passed the breakfast room to find the door open and occupied for once.

“Credence,” Graves called from inside. “I asked them to set your place in here.”

He entered hesitantly to find that the table had indeed been set with the good china and crystal. The sideboard was laid out with a fuller breakfast than Credence had ever seen at either Miss Barebone’s or the kitchen. Conscious of Graves’s presence, he poured himself a cup of coffee and buttered a slice of toast. 

“I usually take a walk before getting down to business,” said Graves. “If you’d like to join me and the dog, I wouldn’t be averse.” He spoke without once taking his eyes off the newspaper that sat beside his plate.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to go straight to work,” said Credence. 

Graves hummed. “As you please.”

Credence sipped his coffee and didn’t touch his toast.

Suddenly, Graves looked up from his newspaper. “Mr. Barebone,” he said, “this really can’t continue.”

“Sir?”

“I was very short with you yesterday, and I apologize for that. I don’t travel particularly well, and I was hardly expecting to meet you on the side of the road in the pouring rain. Now,” he continued, “if you’d genuinely prefer not to walk, that’s your prerogative, and I’ve no intention of pulling rank. But if you’re purposefully avoiding me under the delusion that I don’t like you and don’t want to get to know you better, I assure you you're mistaken.”

They stared at each other. It seemed almost as though he were as startled by his speech as Credence was. 

“I genuinely want to work, sir,” Credence said at last. “But I appreciate your thinking of me.”

Graves considered his words for a moment. Then he nodded, more to himself than to Credence, and returned to his newspaper. He looked more polished than yesterday, but paradoxically, he seemed more relaxed: his suit jacket slung over the back of his chair, his collar loosened, no tie. As he read, a stray lock of hair fell into his eyes; he swiped it back immediately.

Credence took a bite of his toast.

 

Half an hour later, Credence was beginning to regret his decision not to come on that walk. Cloistered away in his office, he glared at the floor plan of the house as if staring hard enough would force it to do his job for him. He didn’t want to help sell the house. In truth, he couldn’t even imagine why Graves wanted to sell it in the first place, for all the history it might contain. It was clear enough that he had money troubles—but to sell his ancestral home to right them? That spoke of something more. 

Perhaps its style was no longer in fashion, and as a modern man, Graves wanted something to better reflect the times. Credence had spent the majority of his life in a glorified tenement; he didn’t know the first thing about houses. 

Or how to begin selling them. 

His chair scraped across the floor as he rose from his desk and strode to the window. The early morning mist had evaporated, providing an excellent view of the back grounds, across which Graves was currently strolling, tossing a stick for Raffles, who bounded across the grass to retrieve it for him. He knelt down in the grass—surely it must still have been wet—and scratched her enthusiastically behind the ears. 

He should tell him sooner rather than later that he was no good for this job, Credence decided. 

Graves chose that moment to glance up directly at Credence, who took an instinctive step back. Caught. But Graves just lifted a hand in greeting, which, after a moment, Credence cautiously returned. 

Not right now, he decided. Later. 

 

Several hours and an ensuing headache later, he slipped into the kitchen, where Jacob and Mrs. Esposito were busy with dinner. As she dropped several dirty knives into the sink, Mrs. Esposito spotted him in the doorway.

“You look run-down,” she said. 

“I feel run-down,” Credence said. He sat at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands. “I don’t think I can do this.” 

Jacob wiped his hands on his apron and poured out a mug of cocoa, which had been heating on the stove. He set it in front of Credence and sat down across from him. “What’s the trouble?” he asked. “You should drink that,” he added when Credence sat back in his chair without taking the mug with him.

Credence sipped it. It was richer than he expected, not quite as sweet as he’d feared. “I’ve never sold a house before,” he said. “Let alone one on this scale. I don’t know where to start.”

“I grew up in a tenement,” Jacob said, “so my experience is limited. Hattie—” he turned to Mrs. Esposito— “you have any thoughts?”

She hummed and began doing the dishes. Credence jumped up automatically to reach for a dish towel, but she pointed sternly at him until he return to the table and his cocoa. “The house has been in the Graves family for years,” she said once he resumed his seat. “The present Mr. Graves is the first to even consider selling the place, so I couldn’t tell you anything specific. But Mr. Scamander and his brother sold off their family home back around wartime,” she mused. “I imagine he could tell you something about it.”

“Newt has a brother?” asked Credence.

“Had,” Mrs. Esposito corrected. “He died out in France in ’17. What was his name? Mr. Kowalski, you remember, don’t you?”

Jacob shrugged. “Before my time.”

She made a moue of frustration. “Mr. Graves met him in France, and after he passed, he took on Mr. Scamander as a special favor to him. Theseus!” she added, triumphant. “That was his name. Theseus Scamander. You ask Mr. Scamander, he could probably tell you something about selling.”

 

He went in search of Newt on the pretext of bringing him water and found him trimming the hedges near the front of the house. Newt wiped sweat from his forehead and drank the water in one go, and Credence asked about what Mrs. Esposito had said.

“That was about ten years ago,” Newt replied. “My memory can’t be faultless. But I seem to remember having to spend a great deal of money fixing the roof. And that was before we even considered getting an appraisal. It leaked,” he said in clarification. “You had to put a bowl underneath it when it rained.”

“So I should see what needs repairs first?” asked Credence.

“Yes, I’d say so,” he said. “I’ll tell you one thing: the basement’s _always_ damp. There’s problems every year with rot. You’re lucky it’s not the summertime,” he added. “It makes a dreadful musty smell in summer.”

“Excellent,” Credence said. “Anything else you can think of?”

“Nothing immediately comes to mind.” He put his finger against one of the leaves of the hedge. Credence peered closer in time to see a ladybug meander onto his nail. “The rooms would need to be aired out of course,” Newt continued, his eyes on the insect. “So much of them aren’t used anymore.And then there’s furniture… Really you ought to get someone professional to come and look it all over.” He frowned and set the ladybug back on the branch. “Theseus and I didn’t, and I have a terrible suspicion we left our buyer with a mouse problem.” He smiled ruefully. “Probably overcharged them, but who’s counting a decade down the line?” He handed Credence the water glass. “You said it was Mrs. Esposito who told you?” 

Credence blinked. “That’s right.”

“Did she tell you the rest?”

He shifted his weight. “She said he—your brother—that he died in the war?” Newt nodded and picked up his clippers. “I’m sorry.”

He smiled. “He was a pompous prig.” At Credence’s startled expression, his smile grew wider. “Really. Always better than me at everything and couldn’t make a secret of it. Except gardening,” he allowed after a moment. “He was rubbish at gardening. But he was a good brother. And a good friend, too. He and Mr. Graves were very thick during the war.”

He began clipping the hedge again.

“The other evening I noticed that he has a photograph of a soldier in his office,” Credence began. “Was that your brother?”

Newt didn’t turn around. “Yes,” he said. “I imagine so.”

 

Later in the day, after Credence had summoned up the courage, he knocked on Graves’s office door and resisted the urge to bob from foot to foot with anxiety. At the distant _come in_ he cautiously opened the door. 

Graves was seated not at the desk but at the open window, balanced on the sill with a sheaf of paperwork in one hand and a smoking cigarette in the other. He was in his shirtsleeves, and his collar was loosened. Incredibly, a pair of reading glasses were perched on the bridge of his nose.

“Mr. Barebone,” he said. “What’s the news.”

Credence realized he was staring without saying a word and shook himself into action. “I wanted your permission to hire an inspector, sir. For the house. It’s best if we make all the necessary repairs before we get an appraisal,” he continued, feeling something more was needed.

Graves took a drag on his cigarette and nodded. “Yes,” he said, breathing out a cloud of smoke. “Do that. Am I to assume you’ve found someone already?”

“Yes, sir. At a reasonable rate, too.”

“Well done. And good thinking.”

Momentarily, Credence considered admitting that some of the credit belonged to Newt and Mrs. Esposito, but just then he found he wanted to bask a little in the warmth of Graves’s praise. He ducked his head to hide a smile.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Do keep it up.”

“I will.”

He had the curious sense of walking on air for the rest of the day. 

 

He joined Graves again for dinner that evening and afterward in the library. “Not making an early night of it tonight?” he said when Credence sat down in the chair opposite his own.

“Not tonight, sir.”

Graves lit a cigarette, then offered the open case to Credence, who hesitated for a moment, and then chose one. He leaned forward so Graves could light it—one large hand cupped around the flame and nearly brushing the bridge of Credence’s nose. Credence took a cautious drag on it. Immediately his lungs rebelled, and he suppressed a cough until Graves stood and went to the gramophone player to put on a Vivaldi record.

“So Mr. Barebone,” he said as the music popped and hissed to life. “Tell me about yourself.”

His voice was still hoarse from the cigarette. “There’s not a great deal to tell, sir.” He cast about for some detail. “I’ve lived here in New York all my life. Never been on Long Island until now, though.” 

“Parents?”

Credence shrugged. “They died when I was young. I lived in an orphanage until I was seven and then Miss Barebone adopted me and put me in her school.”

“Ah, yes,” said Graves darkly. _“_ I had thought I saw that name on your resumé.” He took his seat again. “You can’t be more than nineteen, then, if you went through her school.”

“Twenty, sir. She took me on as a teacher after I was a student.”

“And yet I recall in your letter that this is your first paid position,” said Graves.

“I worked for room and board,” said Credence. “But yes.”

Graves frowned. “If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “how much do you have at your disposal? In all the world?”

Credence opened his mouth to reply but then hesitated. “Actually, sir,” he said, “I do mind.”

If Graves was surprised, he didn’t show it. “How ever did you escape from there?” he asked. “From what I hear, students who have the misfortune to be sucked into that school don’t often come back out.”

“I advertised in secret,” said Credence, trying to keep the pride out of his voice. “And when you responded, I told her—Miss Barebone—that I had found a position elsewhere, and that she could not stop me from taking it.”

“I can’t imagine she took it well.”

He had broached the subject at breakfast one morning. In response, she had beat him bloody in front of the students and shrieked a great deal about Judas Iscariot. 

“She didn’t,” Credence said.

“And you weren’t sorry to leave, I imagine.”

Credence cocked his head to the side. “I was sorry to leave the students. I had been in their position, and I did what I could to help them. But I had to go.” He hesitated. “It was like I had a weight tied to my ribs, and wherever I went, I had to drag it all along with me. But the moment I left, I could walk unburdened. If you know what I mean.”

Graves exhaled a cloud of smoke and then ashed his cigarette. “Yes,” he said. “I know exactly.”

There was a heavy but not unpleasant silence. Credence studied the smoke curling off his cigarette but didn’t attempt to try it again. 

“May I ask _you_ something, sir?” he said at last. 

“Of course,” Graves said. “Quid pro quo. It means—”

“—something given for something received,” Credence replied. “Yes.” Despite himself, his lips twitched, and he was gratified when Graves returned the look. His eyes looked warmer when he smiled, however briefly. 

Credence looked away. 

“I wondered why you really meant to sell the house,” he said. 

“I told you. Because it’s an eyesore.”

“Mrs. Esposito said you didn’t always feel that way.”

Graves arched an eyebrow. “Did she now. Well, Doctor Freud—” he looked pointedly at Credence— “I’ll admit it. Childhood casts a powerful glamour.”

“I wouldn’t know, sir,” said Credence. He hesitated. “If you’d prefer I dropped the matter—”

“Don’t think of it. I’m glad that you’re curious. But just because you ask, doesn’t mean I’ll answer, Mr. Barebone.”

“With respect, sir, that’s hardly a quid pro quo.” 

Graves made a sound that may have been a laugh. Then he rose and took several books from the bookshelf nearest him, seemingly at random. “I’m going to read for a little while, and then turn in,” he said. “Feel free to stay.”

The green glass lamp at his elbow clicked to life, and with no further words, he opened the firstbook he had taken and began reading. No spectacles, Credence noticed: he wondered if he were embarrassed of them and didn’t like to wear them in company. The thought was strangely humanizing. 

Realizing he was staring, he rose and went to the nearest shelf. He knew none of the titles, what few there were—like the rest of the house, the library gave the impression of having fallen from former glory—and so selected a novel at random. 

Back in his seat, he glanced over the top of the pages at Graves. He was lost in his reading. 

Warmth curled in Credence’s stomach. He forced his eyes back to the page. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raffles is indeed a stand-in for the niffler. I picture her as a very large and affectionate black irish setter.
> 
> If you missed it, Mrs. Esposito is a reference to Tina and Queenie's landlady from the first film. 
> 
> Drop a comment if you liked it!


	2. What Do You Dream?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His hand hovered over his employer’s shoulder.   
> Would he be permitted to touch him this way, if only to wake him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably say now that while this is a Jane Eyre AU, this isn't completely based in the original story, i.e. there's no Bertha analog. Percival Graves is his own wife in the attic.

Routines were easily formed. They rose at more or less the same time and breakfasted together, during which time Graves would drink at least two cups of coffee and, by degrees, arrive at a state of consciousness. Then Credence would retreat to his office and work for a few hours while Graves took his walk around the grounds, Raffles trotting at his heels. If Credence looked out of his window at the right time, he would find him seated on the bench beneath the large maple tree, throwing sticks for Raffles to retrieve. 

Then Graves would come inside and lock himself inside his own office for the majority of the day. Rarely did he join Credence for lunch. 

Only after dinner did he really come alive, and then Credence was expected to join him in the parlor to keep him company. He needed constant occupation: he carried on full conversations while reading the paper or sketching idly in the margins of one of his ledgers, often with a record playing in the background for extra noise. He asked him all sorts of questions, often repeating himself from evening to evening. Was Credence settling in? Was everything in his office to his satisfaction? What repairs did he think would be necessary before the house was put on the market? Credence should find an expert and get a quote on the damp in the basement. Credence answered all his questions as best as he could. Despite his lack of experience in being the center of anyone’s attention, these evenings were his favorite parts of the day. 

Sometimes Graves would leave off the interrogation and talk about a new play he had seen weeks before, or else lend Credence a book from his bookshelf. Credence was building quite the collection of books in his bedroom courtesy of Graves, who seemed increasingly astounded by his cultural ignorance.

“No Shakespeare?” he said one evening. “You’ve never read him? Not a one?”

“Not a one, sir.” His face burned. 

“We must remedy that, then.” He removed a giant tome from his bookshelf. “Start with _Twelfth Night._ Tell me what you think. Still,” he continued as he handed it off to Credence, “you really ought to see it performed to get the feel for it.”

The pages were vellum. It was thinner and more delicate than anything Credence had ever touched. “Thank you, sir.”

Greatly complicating matters was his increasing attachment to the house, f or all that only a quarter of the rooms were still used. Most of the disused rooms had been locked up, but the preliminaries of selling had obliged Mrs. Esposito to go around with her keys and air them out. Sometimes, in his free hours, Credence would slip into them to explore: running his hands over the dust cloths and occasionally, if he dared, lifting them to see what they hid. Once, in one of the upstairs parlors, he discovered a grand piano. It was horribly out of tune from disuse, and Credence knew only a small assortment of hymns, but nonetheless it became a ritual of his to sneak upstairs and play, keeping his touch as light as possible so he would not be discovered. But once or twice, when he finished a hymn, he would hear heavy footsteps retreating down the corridor outside, as though the listener, too, did not wish to be found out. Credence entertained his private suspicions, which were more or less proven correct when, a month later, Graves finally paused in the open doorway to listen. 

“You know there’s a perfectly good one downstairs,” he said when Credence had finished. 

“I wouldn’t wish to intrude, sir.”

“You’ll intrude where I say you will,” Graves said. “Tonight, after supper. And no more of that cringing manner of playing, either,” he continued. “She’s a fine instrument and I’ll have you do her justice.”

Credence smiled a little. “Yes, sir.”

“There should be some sheet music in the attic somewhere,” he added. “You’re welcome to it, should you want something more secular than ‘Cast Thy Burden On The Lord.’”

Then he left, those heavy footfalls thudding on the floor, and Credence had the freedom, at last, to lean on the piano and catch his breath.

He was aware of what was happening, of course. He was no stranger to the stammering breathlessness that overcame him when he was confronted by a handsome pair of eyes. He had known it first at school with Jonah, who sat nearby during Prayers and would sometimes catch his eye and smile at him, and Credence would feel warm and not understand why. Miss Barebone would catch them huddling for warmth in the corner of the bedroom during the winter sometimes and beat them both. 

“Why was she angry?” he asked Jonah after the first time, after nursing his hands. 

“Leviticus,” he answered. “We need to be more careful.”

He read it and understood in a vague sense how it applied to him. But he had always entertained some faint hope that his tendency to blush in the presence of good-looking men was just an odd quirk and wouldn’t cause him undue humiliation in life. Certainly, when he’d sent out that first advertisement, he hadn’t imagined that the job he’d be offered would involve so much casual intimacy with his employer. For that matter, he hadn’t imagined that his employer would be anything like Graves. He had pictured someone upwards of fifty years who would give him the standard drudgery of office work and wouldn’t have the slightest inclination to hear him clumsily play the piano after dinner. 

“What other abilities have you hidden?” Graves asked after Credence had insisted on leaving the piano and replaced the lid. 

“Nothing in particular. I was told I’m not particularly talented,” answered Credence.

“At the piano?”

“At anything.” He shifted on the piano bench. “Miss Barebone said I was touched.”

“I’ll wager your Miss Barebone was tone-deaf.”

An inspector for the house was hired, and various recommendations were made for the basement, as well as for the windows, many of which were not structurally sound and let in draughts. Graves muttered about the house eating money but forked over the cash for repairs with no further protests. The house buzzed with activity. 

To Credence’s surprise, offers for the property were already coming in. “There’s been a considerable offer from Abraxas Malfoy,” he told Graves one day, waving the telegram. “Apparently he’s been looking for a house here in the States for some time.”

“Yes,” said Graves, “and I’ll wager it being former Graves property only makes the deal sweeter.”

“Will you accept?” asked Credence. “It’s a lot of money.”

He took the telegram from him and looked over it, one thick eyebrow cocked. “Let him sweat a little,” he said at last and returned it. “See what other offers we get. We may be penniless, but we’ve still got our pride, and I’d rather stay in debt than see this become the Malfoy summer house.”

Part of Credence thought that Graves was being unduly stubborn, but the rest of him was too thrilled by the _we_ to care. 

That night, Graves tossed him _This Side of Paradise_ off the shelf and asked him to read to him. Fifteen minutes into the book, Credence glanced up from the pages to see Graves lighting a cigarette, his eyes on Credence. He averted his gaze when Credence caught him. Surreptitiously, Credence breathed in the scent of the smoke. It felt like an extension of him, the same way the scent of his cologne did, and his footsteps thudding away from the piano room.

The household functioned much as it always did, taking little notice of Credence’s desire and adjusting to the invasions of the workmen with a stiff sort of dignity. But even so, he could sense a new tension, borne out of the news of the house’s impending sale. One afternoon, just as he raised his fist to knock on Graves’s office door, he heard voices from inside. 

“You’ve worked long and hard for us,” Graves was saying. “I assure that you’ll be well looked after. You’ll have a generous pension—”

“My pension, Mr. Graves, is hardly the point,” Mrs. Esposito replied. “May I speak plainly, sir?”

“Go on, Hattie.”

“I’ve worked for this family in this house for nearly thirty years. I’ve watched staff and family come and go. I knew _you_ before you knew how to read. And I don’t believe for a moment that the little boy I sat on my knee thirty-some years ago would have let the family estate go out of sheer cowardice. Now marriage is one thing, and I know you have your own life, but the house is something else. If your father could see you now, gambling away what you love—”

“I hate this house.”

“You _used_ to love it. You hate it now because you hate the memories.” Silence. “In which case,” she continued, “I daresay you ought to make some better ones.”

There was a long silence. 

“I have the menu for next week if you’d like to approve it,” she said at last, and Credence heard footsteps making for the door and left before he could be caught eavesdropping.

* * *

Long years of waking for midnight prayers had left Credence unable to sleep through the night. At eleven-forty every night, his eyes would snap open and there would be no chance of returning to sleep until at least two. He would pray for an hour or so, then fall to wandering his room for the sheer novelty of being able to do so. Sometimes he would light the gas lamp (a gas lamp!) and read one of the books Graves had loaned him. It was a strange pleasure to read all the books Miss Barebone had once spat on and called the influence of the Devil.

A burst of thunder overhead startled him. 

At school, when it stormed during Prayers, Miss Barebone said it was God testing their conviction. Credence marked his page and went to the window to look out. If he squinted, he could just see the rain lashing the roof outside. 

He could see a light in the kitchen. Perhaps Jacob or Newt was there and they’d join him for a cup of hot chocolate. He had a sudden desire not to be alone. 

He pulled on his threadbare robe and tiptoed into the corridor, holding the lamp aloft. The rain was increasing; it roared on the shingles as he made his way toward the staircase. 

An odd sound made him pause on the first step. It sounded almost like a human voice, but it had been too muffled to make out what, if anything, had been said. Credence cocked his head. Another roll of thunder rumbled overhead. A moment later, lightning illuminated the hallway like a beacon. 

Perhaps he had imagined it.

He had reached the landing when the thunderclap came: it shook the house to its foundations. The light in his lamp shuddered. 

Something crashed on the second floor. 

He looked back. The corridor resembled the mouth of a giant beast, pitch-black and forbidding. Taking pains not to trip, he crept back up the stairs. The sound had seemed to come from the right. Which would take him to—

—Mr. Graves’s bedroom. 

Raffles was already there, whimpering and thumping her tail against the floor. Credence scratched her behind the ears and eyed the door in trepidation. Perhaps it was her whimpering that he’d heard, and not a voice. What would the penalty be if he was imagining it all and disturbed Graves?

He summoned up his courage and knocked at the door. 

“Sir?” There was no reply. “Sir, is everything all right?” 

Thunder in the distance. Credence thought he could hear a groan from inside. 

“Mr. Graves?” 

Again, nothing. Hardly believing his own daring, Credence tested the knob. It was not locked. Tentatively, he opened it and peered in. The darkness within was thick as tar until a burst of lightning lit up every surface, and Credence saw Graves thrashing from side to side beneath the bedclothes. 

Credence set down the gas lamp on the side table near the door and went to the bed. “Sir— _ow!”_ Something had cut the sole of his foot. Hissing, he knelt and squinted at the floor to find that was covered in shards of porcelain. The nightstand directly above was missing a basin. 

Graves was muttering something inaudible. His head jerked from right to left. Careful not to step on any more shards, Credence felt his way around to the other side of the bed. 

“Sir, you’re having a nightmare—”

His hand hovered over his employer’s shoulder. 

Would he be permitted to touch him this way, if only to wake him? 

His hand was shaking. 

“Sir?” he tried again, louder. “You need to wake—“

Graves’s eyes snapped open. He seized Credence’s wrist.

“The fuck are you doing here?” he snapped. His voice was ragged.

Credence stared. “Sir?”

Graves squinted back at him as though trying to place him. “Where am I,” he said. His grip on Credence’s arm had not yet relented.

“Your bedroom, sir? I heard something crash and—”

Abruptly, Graves let go and slumped back against the pillows. 

“Sir?” His wrist throbbed. 

“Another nightmare?” Graves said. 

Credence hesitated. “I believe so, sir.”

“Bring the light over.”

Credence obeyed. His heart hammered in his ribcage. 

In better light, Graves looked more haggard. The shirt of his pajamas was covered in sweat, his hair damp. 

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Credence asked. Graves dragged his hands over his face. Then he noticed the remnants of his washbasin. 

“I suppose I must have knocked it off in my sleep,” he said.

“If you’d like me to clean that up for you—” 

Graves waved a hand. “I’ll have Mrs. Esposito take care of it in the morning. You didn’t step on any of it, did you?”

“No, sir,” lied Credence.

“Very good. Listen, in the top drawer of the dresser over there, there’s undershirts. Bring me one, would you? It doesn’t matter which.”

Credence was halfway to the dresser before he realized the implications of the command. Sure enough, when he had retrieved the shirt and turned back, he found Graves seated on the edge of the bed shirtless, balling up the sweat-soaked shirt anxiously in his hands. He didn’t dare meet his eyes as he gave him the shirt. He was keenly aware of him: the heat that seemed to rise like steam from his bare skin; the hair on his chest; the faint scent of his eau de cologne that lingered on him even after sleep.

“Is there anything else I can do?” Credence asked as Graves pulled the shirt on with shaking hands. 

“No, you’ve done quite enough already. Are _you_ all right?” Graves added in sudden concern. “You look quite pale.”

“I’m fine,” Credence lied again. “I’m just a little cold.”

“Of course. You should go back to your own bed. I’ve kept you long enough.” But there was a hollowness in his tone that suggested that he didn’t want to be alone. 

“Are you sure?” asked Credence. Thunder rumbled again, and Graves flinched, then relaxed with a look of consternation. He put his head in his hands.

“If you’re not going to go,” he said at last, without lifting his head, “you can at least bring me the brandy in my dresser.”

“Sir, should you really drink at this hour—”

“Top left drawer,” Graves said. The words were like lead. 

Credence went to fetch it. It felt strangely like a betrayal to root through his employer’s underthings like this, even when doing so with his permission. Among the linens, he found a small bottle filled with amber-colored liquid and brought it to Graves, who took a generous swig from it and then offered it to Credence, who jerked his head in refusal. 

“You could at least sit down,” Graves said. “If you’re going to stay.”

Credence glanced at the empty space at the foot of the bed, then settled the armchair by the wall instead. It put some distance between them. 

But Graves huffed a laugh. “If you must sit there,” he said, “drag it over a little.”

Against his better judgment, Credence obeyed, taking care to avoid any more of the remnants of the basin. It was a strange kind of intimacy: seated there by the bed as though waiting on a sick patient; Graves in an undershirt, his hair still damp with sweat and his hands a-tremble. 

A minute ticked by, then two. Credence studied his hands. The rain grew more insistent, roaring against the roof. 

“I want to talk to you about it,” Graves said out of nowhere.

“What about, sir?”

“The war. But it’s not a particularly uplifting story, and I won’t put you through that.” He sank back against the pillows and heaved a sigh.

Credence hesitated, then held up his hands, the backs facing Graves so that he could see the rough scar tissue that had been accrued there. “Miss Barebone beat me nearly every day for more years than I’d care to count,” he said. “I’ve never been to war, but I’m not exactly a stranger to hardship. If you want to talk, I’ll listen to you. Sir.”

Graves looked him for a moment, then took his left hand and brought it closer to study the scars on his knuckles. Credence stiffened. He had never touched him before.

“Do they hurt?” Graves asked. Credence shook his head. “That’s good.” He let go of his hand, and Credence immediately shrank back again. His pulse roared in his ears.

“Did you still want to talk, sir?” he asked. He chewed his lower lip. “Mrs. Esposito said you took on Mr. Scamander as a favor to his brother,” he said at last. Graves looked up sharply. “Perhaps you could tell me how it happened. If you like.”

With a grunt of effort, Graves reached into his desk drawer and retrieved his cigarette case and his lighter. Once he had lit a cigarette and sank back against the pillows, he closed his eyes. 

“I went out to France in early 1917,” he began. “That was where I met him.”

“Theseus?”

He jerked his head. “We were of a different rank, technically, but friendships grew very easily there in the trenches. We got close. Perhaps closer than we should have. It didn’t pay to grow attached to anyone,” he explained. “Which I eventually learned. He died in the sixth month we were there. It wasn’t clean, and he lingered for a time. But I wasn’t there when he went.” 

He lapsed into silence, and Credence shifted in his chair. 

“It caught him in the leg,” he continued suddenly. “The bullet. But it wasn’t so serious that he needed a hospital. That damned fool of a surgeon told him it looked worse than it was.” He cleared his throat. “Then it got worse and worse and worse, and the little idiot didn’t say a damned thing.” His face softened. “He must have been so frightened. And I didn’t even know.”

The door creaked open, and Credence started as though he had been caught in wrongdoing. But it was only Raffles, who leaped straight onto the bed and fell down beside Graves, who smiled and scratched her ears. Credence studied his hands. He listened to Graves murmur to the dog for a little while, then he asked—

“And Mr. Scamander?”

“He told me he was worried about him. Newt was a year too young to fight at the time, and their parents had passed two years previous. He didn’t think he’d be able to get a job just being—well—himself.” He cleared his throat. “I promised I’d take him in if he died and I made it through. Which I did. Technically speaking he’s a ward. He has an allowance. I told him specifically not to feel he had to do anything to earn it, but he takes care of the gardens anyway. Some pride of principle that he has.”

He had related the whole story with very little emotion, as though reading from a reasonably engaging book of history—all without saying Theseus’s name once. Credence was well acquainted with methods of displacement and could sense wounds that hadn’t really healed, just scabbed over.

“And then when I came home,” Graves continued, biting out the words, “I found that my mother had died while I was in France, and that my father had speculated away virtually the entire estate. And then two days later he put a bullet in his mouth, and I got to find him.” He huffed a bitter, ugly laugh. “You wanted to know how I could ever sell this house. There’s your reason. Will you find a way to blame me, Mr. Barebone?”

Credence shook his head. “I can’t.”

His eyes glittered in the dim lamplight. “I wish I had better memories to give you,” he said. 

“I wish that you had them for yourself,” Credence said. 

The corners of Graves’s mouth twitched in a sad little smile. “How strange you are,” he murmured. Then he looked up at the ceiling, and Credence became conscious that the rain had slowed to a lazy patter on the rough. There was no more thunder. “I think the worst of it’s passed,” Graves said. “You should return to bed.”

Credence blinked. “But sir—”

“Raffles will protect me in your absence,” he said. “Take the morning off tomorrow.”

“But I work in the mornings!” Credence protested.

“I’m well aware of that, which is why I insist you take it off. Sleep. You’ve more than earned it. Oh, and Credence.”

He had been inches from the door. He looked back. His employer seemed smaller than ever, swamped by the enormous bed and the large dog spread across his lap. Credence had been aware to some degree of the grief that hung on Graves like a heavy overcoat, but he’d never truly seen the evidence of it until now. 

“Thank you for waking me,” Graves said. “I owe you.”

Credence swallowed. “There’s no debt, sir.”

The door shut with a click.

 

It wasn’t until he reached his bedroom that he realized his foot had been bleeding since he cut it. He bandaged it with an old handkerchief and returned to bed. 

Beneath the sheets, he threw his arm over his eyes and, in the dark, allowed himself to think about that brief moment of exposure: the muscles in Graves’s arms flexing beneath his skin as he put on the nightshirt, that brief look of need in his eyes when he awoke and saw Credence standing over him. And when he’d taken his hand…

He had never seen Graves unshaven before. He couldn’t help wondering what it must feel like to touch, to feel against his cheek and the side of his neck.

He was straying down the path of sin again, he could already feel it. Even now, a world away from her, Credence could hear Miss Barebone hissing a silken warning. Her hand extending, her demand for his belt. 

Credence groaned out loud and pressed his arm more firmly over his eyes, curling his fingers into fists.

_I’m safe,_ he thought. _I don’t have to do what she says._

Tears were welling up in his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut against them, but they only gathered on his lashes, dampening his arm. 

“Credence,” he could almost hear her say. “Your belt.” That placid tone always sent chills throughout his frame. She would tell him of Sodom and Gomorrah soon, while she whipped him. Then she would grab his hair. “Would _you_ lay a hand on an angel of the Lord?” Those mad, feverish eyes boring into him. “An angel is a flawless being, made in His image. You are not fit to look at them, let alone touch them with that wicked want in your heart.” 

Credence rolled over and laid the pillow over his head in a futile effort to block out the noise. His hands and back stung. 

Embarrassed, half-asleep and near panic, he wished suddenly that Graves would do what he had done for him and come to wake him properly. But he would not be afraid to comfort him. He would sit beside him on the bed, lay his hand between his shoulder blades, let his fingers creep up the back of his neck and stroke his hair. 

_“It’s a dream,”_ he’d say. _“Nothing more.”_

_“Why are you here?”_ Credence would ask.

_“Because you did the same for me just a short while ago.”_

He’d pull back the collar of Credence’s nightshirt, then, and kiss the back of his neck, just against the first bump of his spine. And Credence would search for his hand and turn his head to face him, to find his mouth with his own. 

The floorboards creaked, and Credence sat bolt upright. His face was hot, a flush spreading across his chest. His cock ached heavily between his legs, and for a moment he considered giving in and touching, but memories of punishments for such things at school stilled him. Moreover, he did not want to implicate Graves in his sin. How could he look him in the eye if he surrendered like that?

With a sigh, he rose and splashed water from the pitcher on his dresser onto his face and willed the cold shock of it to kill the fire in him. Then he lit the gas lamp and found his book. He knew there was no chance of sleep.

* * *

It was past eleven in the morning when Credence opened his eyes. He had fallen asleep in the armchair, the book still open on his lap. The sight of the time sent a jab of panic through his chest, but then he remembered Graves’s command that he take the morning off and sank back into the chair.

By degrees, the events of the previous night returned to him: the storm, Graves’s nightmares, the discussion of Theseus Scamander and the war, those strangely soft eyes blazing into his own. Memories of the rest of the night returned just as quickly, and Credence faintly recalled a dream that he must have had in which he returned to Graves’s room and crawled into his bed on top of him. Dream Graves had rolled over and pressed him into the mattress without hesitation.

Credence stood and became aware of a stickiness in his shorts. He sucked in a breath. Emissions were a source of shame at Miss Barebone’s school, where laundry was done communally, and stains were taken as proof of a weakness in character, regardless of whether they were intentional or not. Credence had been beaten for it often enough that, even now, such early morning discoveries turned his stomach with anxiety. He would shower before he ventured out. 

 

Even an hour later, after he had bathed and said a furtive, self-conscious prayer or two, he was confronted by a terrible shyness when Graves was in the vicinity. Out of fear of coming face-to-face with him and therefore having to look him in the eye, he retreated to his office despite his instructions not to work. To his relief, Graves was not seated beneath the maple tree outside.

He had just settled into work when there came a knock at the door. Graves strode inside before Credence could even speak.

“I seem to recall telling you to take the morning off,” he said. There were dark circles under his eyes, and Credence thought his eyelids looked puffier than normal.

“It’s nearly twelve, sir.”

“That won’t do. You’ll take the afternoon off too, then. I won’t hear any words to the contrary,” he continued when Credence opened his mouth to protest. “All work, no play, and you know what happens.”

“Sir—!”

He had turned to go. Now he looked over his shoulder at him. “How’s that?”

“I—“ he cast about helplessly and could only come up with the truth— “I’ve never had a day off before.”

Graves stared at him, and for a moment Credence thought that he was about to be mocked, but then he said, “What, never?” He shook his head. “All right, that’s it. Pen down.”

“What’s going on?” 

“I’m taking you out.”

 

Graves waved off Jacob’s offer to drive them and got behind the wheel himself. It was strange to sit in the passenger seat of the motorcar and look over and see his employer there, driving with his gloves bunched in one hand. The day was bright and clear, the sky a brilliant shade of blue, and they drove with the top of the car down despite the wind chill. 

“There ought to be a spare scarf in the glove box,” Graves called over the roar of the motor when he saw Credence shivering. 

“I’m all right, sir.” The idea of wearing anything of Graves’s, even as relatively impersonal as a scarf, was too much on a day already so out of the ordinary. 

“Suit yourself,” he said. A moment later, he asked, “What do you do for fun, Credence?”

The question took him by surprise. “I don’t know,” he said. “I like to read, I suppose. And go on walks.”

“And music,” said Graves. “Let’s not forget that. I imagine you’ve never been to the theatre.”

“No, sir.”

“I ought to take you one of these days,” he said. “Something tells me Ziegfield won’t be to your taste, but there’re some very good theatrical troupes. A comedy,” he added. “I’d like to see you laugh one day, Mr. Barebone.”

“You always call me that when you’re teasing me.”

Graves frowned. “I suppose I do. Well then. _Credence._ One day I’d like to see you laugh.” He looked briefly away from the road at Credence, who stared firmly at his lap, pressing his lips together. “Do I detect a smile, Mr. Barebone?” The corners of Credence’s lips twitched despite his best efforts. “ _Certainly_ not,” Graves answered himself in mock disbelief. “Mr. Barebone only smiles at very select witticisms on Thursdays, and only after six PM at that, as we all know.” His smile was audible in his voice. “As for laughter, no mortal has yet heard it and lived to tell the tale.”

Credence pressed his fist to his mouth to hide the grin spreading inexorably across his face. His ears blazed. 

“Someone alert _The Times,”_ Graves said. “There’s something you don’t see every day. While I have you in this mood,” he continued, “tell me: when you were at that school, what’s the thing you always longed to do and couldn’t?”

_Kiss Jonah Lorrimer on the mouth_ was Credence’s first thought, but what he said instead was—

“Eat ice cream.”

“Eat ice cream,” Graves repeated. “And why’s that?”

“We weren’t allowed to have it,” Credence explained. “Miss Barebone said that it invited the sin of gluttony.” 

“Never had a day off, never had an ice cream cone,” said Graves. “I’m beginning to wonder, Credence, whether you’ve lived at all.”

“I haven’t,” Credence said honestly. 

Graves glanced briefly over at him. “The first thing we do, then, is get you a peppermint ice cream.”

“Sir, it’s too cold!”

“Then we’ll have it indoors. And then I’m taking you on a very long walk to a very fine bookstore, where I expect to see you exit with at least three titles under your arm.”

“Sir, you haven’t paid me yet!”

A pause. “I haven’t, have I?”

“No.”

“I’ll do that tomorrow, then,” Graves decided. “And we’ll put your books on my dollar.”

Credence stared. “You can’t do that for me.”

“Credence Barebone,” Graves began, “I had a devil of a night last night. The least you can do for me today is to let me engage in some old-fashioned altruism.”

Credence shifted uncomfortably. “All right,” he said at last. “But you take the books out of my pay.” Graves scoffed, but Credence stared fixedly at him until he was forced to look over. “Mr. Graves, I mean it.”

“All right, Credence,” he said.

He returned his attention to the road. It was growing bitterly cold. 

Slowly, without looking once at Graves, Credence opened the glove box and removed the scarf. It was soft and heavy on his neck and smelled of wool and Graves’s cologne. When he chanced a glance at Graves again, he thought he saw a faint smile tugging at his mouth. 

 

As if sensing that Credence would be uncomfortable if he ate alone, Graves bought a second ice cream for himself. It was very good, although Credence had nothing to compare it to, and he was too conscious of his surroundings and the man at his side to take much notice. They ate in the lobby of a disarmingly fine hotel—the sort of place Miss Barebone would have spat on for its ostentatiousness—and then took the walk to the bookstore, where Credence chose a Sabatini novel and then, after some deliberation, a book about Helen of Troy. Graves noticed the number of titles, arched an eyebrow at him, and Credence met it with a defiant tilt of his head. 

Graves bought _The Age of Innocence,_ and Credence felt quite sure the book would appear mysteriously in his bedroom within the week.

“You can’t afford all this, sir,” Credence told him in an undertone as Graves headed for the clerk’s desk. 

Graves arched an eyebrow. “Oh, can’t I.”

“I’ve seen the state of your finances.”

“Three books will hardly ruin me, Mr. Barebone.”

It was growing dark when they left the bookshop. Further down the street, a child clinging to her mother’s hand pointed up at the sky and shouted, “ _Rain!”_

Graves tugged his collar up. “We’d better hurry back and put the hood up,” he said. But by the time they reached the car, what had been initially a few drops had expanded into a downpour. Passersby hastened for the doors of apartments and stores. Deserted, with the rain coming down in a thicker and thicker wall of gray, the entire street felt dreamlike, as though at any moment Credence could stumble and wake in his bed at Miss Barebone’s with the cracks in the plaster glaring at him.

Inside the car, the hood now shielding them from the weather, Graves lost no time in taking them out on the road again. “This always seems to happen to us, doesn’t it,” he said. They were both soaked.

They had been in the car for twenty minutes with little conversation when he finally broke the silence. “I hope you enjoyed this afternoon.”

“I did. Thank you, sir.”

They drove in silence for a little while. “Credence,” he began at last, “I think I owe you an apology for last night,” he said. 

“I told you there’s no debt, sir.”

He continued as though Credence had not spoken. “When you first woke me, I may have said some harsh things. You didn’t deserve them, and they weren’t meant in reference to you.”

“I understand.”

“I think you don’t.” But he said it amicably.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Credence began, “is it shell-shock, sir?”

Graves glanced at him. “What makes you say that?”

“We were expected to do charity at school,” Credence explained. “We saw a lot of soldiers.”

“I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. You handled things last night so capably. An angel of the battlefield, too, eh?”

Heat rushed to Credence’s face. He ducked his head. “Nothing like that,” he mumbled. “So many of them were out on the street, all of them shell-shocked. Most of them couldn’t hold a job. Their families abandon them. We just helped how we could.”

Graves hummed. “It’s the thunder for me. Sounds like the shells. Generally I take a downer and hope for the best. I see that look of yours,” he added. “I suppose that school took a dim view of prescription pills.”

“I was taught not to tamper with nature,” Credence admitted.

“If you woke up routinely with gunfire and screaming horses in your ears, you’d feel differently,” said Graves, not unpleasantly. 

“I dream too, sir.” Credence hesitated. “It’s nothing like yours, though.”

“And what do you dream?”

He swallowed.

“Of school.” He glanced at Graves to gauge his response, but his eyes were fixed firmly on the road. He cleared his throat. “You know,” he continued, “I lost a friend too. There was a ‘flu outbreak when we were fifteen.”

He had known what would happen the moment Jonah coughed, and Credence had felt the burning heat from his forehead against the backs of his fingers. But fear of contagion didn’t stop Credence from climbing into his friend’s bed, holding him close, and humming one of the psalms he’d always thought was pretty, as if the pressure of his arms could hold the life in him.

Miss Barebone caught them, of course. She dragged him from the bed and beat him as she always did, but he was barely sensible of the blows. He could still feel the soul rattling out of his friend’s body.

The sickness passed on soon after. That Sunday, Miss Barebone read from the Book of Jonah. 

_“He replied, ‘Take me and throw me into the sea, and then it will calm down for you. I know it is my fault that this great storm has struck you.’”_

No one mistook her meaning. Credence shook where he sat in the pews and tried not to make his tears obvious. 

Each Sunday for the next few months, they visited the cemetery where the students they’d lost had been interred. The first time, he went to kneel at Jonah’s headstone but Miss Barebone’s firm hand came down on his shoulder and prevented him. After a few weeks, he stopped trying.

He gave Graves a much-expurgated account of the story. 

“One can’t seem but to lose one’s friends,” Graves said. “Be it Spanish ‘flu or a Hun bullet.” There was a beat or two of silence. “Were you alone, after your friend passed?”

“I was, sir.”

“And you’re twenty now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Five years without a friend,” Graves mused. “Five more makes a decade. No wonder.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“You treat every conversation as though it were your very first. I thought your eyes would start out of their sockets the day I met you. And yet…” He shook his head, and Credence raised an eyebrow. “You have a spark. You must have, or you couldn’t have survived that school, let alone told Mary Lou Barebone to go to hell. And I believe it’s grown since then.”

Credence looked away sharply. His face burned. Graves no doubt expected an intelligent reply, but his mind had been wiped blank. Already regretting it, he glanced at Graves. He was driving gloveless again—his hands must be freezing, he thought idly. He wondered how they would feel cupping his jaw, stroking his neck, his hair.

They passed the rest of the drive in silence. At some point, Credence must have fallen asleep because when he opened his eyes again, he found a blanket draped over him and Graves’s hand on his shoulder. He’d shaken him gently awake. 

“We’re back,” he said. His face was difficult to make out in the darkness. “You’re lucky you were asleep. We nearly ran off the road at one point, and if you’d been awake, I’m sure you’d have gotten out and walked the rest of the way, rain or no.” Credence smiled and suppressed a yawn. It was still raining outside. “Come on,” Graves continued. “Let’s go in before we catch our deaths. You’re shivering.”

He imagined saying _do we have to?_ and Graves smiling. _Of course not._ An arm around him. The rain sliding down the windows, obscuring them from the view of others. But that was a fantasy. If he were to be so stupid, Graves would either respond in anger or condescension. Credence was accustomed to anger, and while it would hurt, condescension was a different, worse pain.

“Let’s,” he said.

 

Inside the house, Graves lit a cigarette in the entryway, then made for the library. “Care for a nightcap?” he asked.

Credence shook his head. “If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d like to retire for the night.”

“It’s only a quarter past.”

“Yes, but it’s been a very long day.”

“But an enjoyable one, I hope?”

He nodded. “Yes. Thank you. You shouldn’t have done it, but thank you.”

“Nonsense, I was happy to. You’re sure you won’t have that drink?”

He didn’t know about drinking, but he longed to spend more time with Graves. But he was exhausted from the day and being so close to him. If he spent much longer in his company, he thought he might suffocate. 

“I’m sure. But thank you.”

Graves studied him for a moment. Credence couldn’t meet his eye. “Very well,” he said at last. “I wish you a better rest than last night’s.”

“And you too, sir.” He was almost at the stairs when Graves spoke again.

“What’s the matter with your foot?”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Sir?” he said weakly, turning back around.

“You’ve been favoring one foot over the other all day. What happened?”

“Nothing,” Credence lied. “Goodnight, sir.”

 

Credence locked the bedroom door behind him. Downstairs, Graves was likely listening to a record and drinking alone, and Credence had abandoned him because of a slip of the tongue.

He removed his shoes and examined the bandage on his foot. Blood had soaked through the linen into his sock. 

He slumped against the door and buried his head in his hands.

 

It was only a few hours later that he realized he had never returned Graves’s scarf. If he pressed his nose into it to catch his scent, it was no one else’s business but his own.

* * *

Graves did not appear at breakfast the next day, and when Credence asked Mrs. Esposito as to his whereabouts, she announced that he had gone back to town.

“When will he return?” asked Credence.

“In a few weeks, he said.” Mrs. Esposito set down the coffee cup that she had brought him. She patted his cheek. “Mr. Kowalski left a coffee cake for us before he left. You come down sometime and have a piece.”

“I’ll do that, ma’am.” His voice sounded far away.

“Don’t work too hard,” she said and left the office. The door shut behind her with a snap. Credence stared at the typewriter and piles of paperwork in front of him. It suddenly seemed futile. He took a sip of his coffee and left the desk to open the casement window. Cold air wafted inside. There was a figure beneath the maple tree, and for a moment his heart leaped into his mouth. But it was only Newt, raking the leaves. 

Perhaps, in his office in the city, Graves was also looking out his window: coffee cup in hand, the breeze chilling him. Only he would look out on gray, busy streets, not the russet-gold of autumnal grounds. 

_Why can’t you stay here?_ Credence thought. Willed it at him across the many miles. _Stay here where it’s beautiful and I can look out from my office window and see you in the mornings._ But that was a selfish thought. If Graves wanted to escape his family skeletons, Credence had no right to prevent him from doing so.

Newt had noticed him. He shaded his eyes in the sun and waved. Credence smiled and waved back.

He was being impractical at best. There was no point to hope here. His employer’s affairs were of no concern. And he had more friends here than he had ever had in his life before. Let Graves do what he liked. Credence would be happy regardless. 

It would be fine.

His coffee was growing cold. He took another sip, closed the window, and returned to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drop a comment if you liked it, or find me on tumblr @gentlemanisatramp if you want to talk!
> 
> Twelfth Night is, among other things, a story about a young woman who disguises herself as a boy and falls in love with her employer. If Percy were more emotionally literate, he might have thought twice about rec'ing it to poor Credence.
> 
> I should be on the lookout at some point for a side story focusing on Percy and Theseus during the war, since I'm a bit too taken with them not to play around a little :D


End file.
